Local sports message boards

I made myself read this thread again, especially the stuff I posted from "The West Wing," after I made the rookie mistake of getting involved with fans on a message-board thread about the media.

That board hired me to write original content for them, and I let my guard down and thought I could explain some things to people who deep down I knew do not want it explained to them.

I'm in self-imposed timeout for the rest of the week.

 

nothing good ever happens when you engage the users. Fanbois, bloggers, the whole lot.

 

Years ago I worked with a great writer (national baseball guy) who did high schools in the off season. One of the highlights of the Friday night was him calling the local AM radio show under a fake name (the radio guy knew who it was) and talk about the game.

If I remember correctly, the calls seemed to focus on everything but the game like the quality of the hot dogs, the band, the parking, how his mother was doing...

It was so much better than "they tried hard" or "like to congratulate."

 

I post on a local prep message board under my own name, mostly to link stories because one of the metros around here does too. My "philosophy" if you can call it that is to post answers to people who are looking for schedules, stats, all-star lists or things like that and stay away from anything that's a childish, no body wins argument and not to bash any posters or kids.

The number of followers on our twitter account or Cover It Live blogs goes up exponentially when we post a link on a message board as opposed to just linking it on the newspaper's homepage.

To me staying off them is counterproductive. As long as you're professional and unbiased, you can cultivate a fan following on the internets.

 

I post on ours under my own name. I think it is important to interact with readers and give our sports coverage credibility in the area. I'm careful about what I post. Nothing argumentative and nothing I wouldn't say to the coaches or even parents of the teams I am posting about, usually just answering questions about the teams themselves.

 

I post on a number of message boards about different things — college and high school wrestling and college and high school football — and those are exactly the rules I follow. I'm not ashamed of who I am, or of what I do, or of someone taking the time to rip me a new one.

We work in a public business where our name is printed next to our work for all the masses to see. Why would I want to hide behind supposed anonymity (sp?) on a message board. I want to be approachable. If someone has a problem with me, I want them to fell like they can e-mail me, call me, write me a message on a message board, or come up to me at an event so long as you're not interfering in my work. I stand behind my work 100 percent. And if I make a mistake, I'm not afraid to own up to that mistake and give an apology, and/or a correction, when needed. I'm a man I'm 26 (sorry, not quite 40). I don't play these high school games of hiding behind the things I write. I think as an adult, we should all make ourselves approachable when working in such a public business.

I've found that people appreciate me making myself available in different avenues of communication. And when a problem arises, 99 times out of 100 the person with a problem will approach me like an adult, and not like a screaming lunatic.

I will never post my opinions on individual players, but I'm not afraid to post what I know about a team I cover, because I think more than anything, people just want information. And there's only so much you can put in the paper, on blogs, on twitter or in videos on the paper web site.

 

If I were still working for a newspaper, I'd probably do at least some of those things: answering questions, posting links to stories and blog posts, etc. That's if I had the time. Last year when I was blogging, it was all I could do to keep up with the questions and comments on my blog and still find time to do the 45 hours a week of newspaper work, for the print edition.

 

I'm still doing it on multiple boards, and it's still very successful by all measures.

 

The fans' hatred of the media on those boards is simply unbelievable. No way should you post a response to those fucking morons. You can't win and they'll just criticize you more. Newspapers should not allow anonymous posting of any kind. It has cheapened the product beyond comprehension. Why not allow unsigned letters to the editor and let them rant and rave in the newspaper as well as the online edition? I thought it was all the same nowadays. Newspapers deserve to die. I wish they would so the people who think anonymous comments and anonymous message board libel and racism is good business would be out of work.